This paper examines the welfare implications of a country joining a currency union as opposed to operating in a flexible exchange rate regime. At the country level, the suboptimal response to domestic and foreign shocks and the inability of setting inflation at the desired level may be offset by...

The composition of public debt by maturity is irrelevant in the standard New Keynesian model of monetary policy. Nevertheless, central banks have, since the outset of the crisis, purchased large amounts of government bonds in the attempt to support economic activity and stem deflationary...

At moderate levels, debt improves welfare and enhances growth. But high levels can be damaging. When does debt go from good to bad? We address this question using a new dataset that includes the level of government, non-financial corporate and household debt in 18 OECD countries from 1980 to...

We investigate the link between credit booms, productivity growth, labour reallocations and financial crises in a sample of over twenty advanced economies and over forty years. We produce two key findings. First, credit booms tend to undermine productivity growth by inducing labour reallocations...